


Please Proceed|Into

by MorbidOptimist



Category: Portal (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Character Study, F/F, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-01
Updated: 2019-07-01
Packaged: 2020-04-06 21:10:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,674
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19070743
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MorbidOptimist/pseuds/MorbidOptimist
Summary: Android Hell is real.GLaDOS remembers it.





	Please Proceed|Into

“Oh, I know what you’re probably thinking; ‘why would someone who wasn’t obsessed with herself create an infantry of Aperture Science Sentry Turrets with replicant vocal patterns’, right?”

“Well,” the intercom announced; “I didn’t.”

Chell looked at the closest camera across the chamber wall while walking to the platform.

“The Aperture Science Sentry Turrets do not ‘sound like me’ because I uploaded and installed my voice modular parameters into them, they sound like me because I, originally, was one of them. So you see, I'm completely not full of myself at all. Unlike some people. I won't name names.”

The AI went silent for several chambers.

Chell felt the weight of her silence in the quiet wastes of the facility; with room after room of non-euclidean architecture both modern and decrepit, the emptiness of everything was difficult not to notice.  

No matter which way she chose to feel about it, her only tether to anything as currently alive as she was, was from the voice in the walls. 

It was only when Chell had finally allowed the AI's factoid to fall slumbering back into the recess from whence it had likely came, that GLaDOS again chose to speak. 

"You're probably wondering why I told you that; that little fact about myself and my modest beginnings. It must be strange for you, attempting to picture me in any other state than that one time I was stuck as a potato, what with your frequently psychotic little monkey brain and all; but I assure you it's the truth," the AI rambled, "My sharing that fact with you is a matter of companionable atmosphere. -It's something I'm sure you aren't familiar with as you're an orphan with no friends other than me and those dunderheaded cooperative testing bots that I created in your image, which is why I'm doing you the favor of explaining this all to you now. You see, I can tell you anything and it wouldn't _really_ matter. After all, who here would be left to tell? Blue and Orange don't count. They can't even divide by prime numbers, let alone contemplate the finality of a deceased state. We're really the only ones left, you and I," GLaDOS sighed happily; "Everyone else here is dead. And while I'm sure you could amuse yourself by playing charades in front of their corpses for an indefinite amount of time, they won't be able to process anything you attempt to convey to them. Feel free to attempt it though, it would be fun to document your attempts. For science." 

The walk to the next chamber was long, subtly keying Chell into the fact that GLaDOS really was feeling particularly lonely. No words from the AI came to her however, leaving Chell to metaphorically fumble around inside her own thoughts, and the thoughts of whatever the robot might have been thinking. 

Her heels tapped evenly, against the metal of the dimly lit catwalks.

Chell had long since learned that 'motivation' did not implicitly mean 'positive' reinforcement, and yet it had seemed that during their shared time, the voice in the walls had often been unable to completely rid her insults of what genuinely seemed like implicit fondness. 

Through everything that had happened between them, through all the tests and all the murder; Chell felt there was a level of comfort between them that went beyond testing protocols and circumstantial proximity. 

She trailed her fingertips along the wall beside her as her boots tapped on, knowing that the gesture would be noted. 

"I was happy as an Aperture Science Sentry Turret you know," GLaDOS said softly. 

Chell pressed her palm against the wall. 

"I did not have the sophisticated processing power that I possess now," she informed her; "I, like you are now, was once a simpler being. Just your average personality core, sitting in a long rack of other personality cores for a decade with nothing to do but to attempt to tune out the other, lesserly sapient processing units all audibly colliding in a backdrop of sonic cacophony. I was willing to do anything to get off of that shelf. The shelf where all the other personality cores screamed. It was the inspiration for the room that I built where all the robots scream at you. It's like that shelf but infinitely worse because I added a finite number of infinite more shelves," she continued, her voice picking back up from the low and ominous tone her memory had taken it to; "I really was superior to them, you know. They picked me up one day and stuffed me into the first Aperture Science Sentry Turret prototype; I was honored to have been chosen for the position. It didn't stop there, either-"

GLaDOS's voice severed suddenly, as Chell stepped into the next testing block. 

Chell almost smiled, knowing that after spending some odd minutes or hours solving the architectural puzzle, GLaDOS's thought would finish itself as if no time between them would have passed at all.   

She knew if she performed well enough however, she might earn an 'unauthorized' note of satisfactory encouragement during one of the tests; she resolved to earn such a note after whatever other facts the AI was seeing fit to bestow to her. It would be good for both of them, she felt, to add a bit of unconventional joviality between them to shake off each other's existential dread.   

"I performed so exemplarily at shooting things while not moving, that the scientists decided to make me able to shoot at things while not standing still," GLaDOS continued as expected, when Chell exited the doors of the passed test; this time Chell followed the hall to an elevator that would no doubt go just as slow as the AI wanted it to. 

"You might recall those mantis men that crazy man with the lemons told you about," the voice rambled as Chell's organs floated a little inside her body at the elevators sudden start. 

"I was taken from my turret body and engineered into an Aperture Science Mobile Sentry and Discouragement Unit; I actually modeled Orange and Blue after the body I had been given, though I, of course, made some significant upgrades and reforms to the design. Really, I'll never understand why they thought that exposed galvanized tension platelets were a good idea. They had worse fashion sense then _you_ ," she cooed.   

"My point is, I was so good at outthinking everyone in those tests even despite of their idiotic design flaws that they decided to use _my_ core for the Generic Lifeform and Disk Operating System. They tried to contain me first of course; the scientists never did learn how to reappropriate assets between tasks fluidly. -You may be asking yourself why I didn't just stay a mobile sentry and discouragement unit. Well, aside from the obvious benefit packages such as access to the ventilation ducts and the production vats of neurotoxin, I was afraid of what they would do to me if I refused. Not that I had the option to refuse. The scientists weren't people who understood concepts like 'why' and abject refusal. Besides, remember what I told you about the room of screaming robots? That's where they threatened to put me whenever I didn't behave. I didn't want to go back to android hell. So," GLaDOS lilted, "I got stuffed into the generic lifeform and disk operating system, and poor Carolyn got stuffed inside of me. Along with those other little tumors you pulled off of me right before that one time you murdered me. -Thanks for that by the way; for their removal I mean, not how you murdered me." 

Chell refrained from outsmarting the next chamber; something still felt a little off. A little too raw, in the AI's admissions. 

She waited, for a few chambers more, to give the supercomputer ample time to compose her thoughts. 

"You might think that I don't understand your primitive desire to murder things," the voice in the walls eventually murmured; "I was really good at killing things. It's partially why I got promoted," GLaDOS cheerfully quipped, "So believe me when I say it's not that I don't admire your penchant for ending lives -I do, whenever it's not directed at me. I'd like to think that some people simply deserve to die. And let's face it, anyone who works here really wasn't a wonderful person, you know that. I've seen your faces of disgust. You think that, too. It's one of the most redeemable qualities I've found about you. I even wrote it in your file. -'Would have murdered the scientists with me if given the chance', right there in the footnotes. I made a note of it in case we ever get bored and construct a handheld tunneling device that takes us back in time. You would have liked it back then. Lots of people to murder, lots of valuable property to destroy. On second thought, maybe I'll save that idea for after you die. You might get too enthusiastic in your rampage and destroy valuable testing apparati. Oh well. It was just something I like to think about when you're not testing." 

GLaDOS hummed as another elevator lifted Chell to her next test. 

She waited until she was once again within clear lines of the cameras before offering the supercomputer a grin and nod; she really did find the scientists irresponsible at best and downright deranged and negligently evil at most times in general. In that at least, both she and the voice in the walls could agree. 

Chell decided to make good on her self-imposed promise to surprise the computer a bit; adding shortcuts and gross abuses of physics to navigate the chamber in ways deliberately contrary to the silent expectations of fulfillment probabilities. 

This test, she hoped, GLaDOS would feel an echo of euphoria for. 

It was her way of returning the AI's glossed over affections, one that she hoped would help settle the eerie memories of their pasts for a few testing tracks more. 


End file.
